US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has reiterated that he believes Iran is contributing to the instability in Iraq, telling US senators that a hasty withdrawal from Iraq would merely serve Iran's interests. Rumsfeld told members of the defense subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee on May 17 that US forces continue to find Iranian-manufactured weapons in Iraq, though he conceded that there is no conclusive proof of Iranian involvement. "The problem we've got is unless you catch somebody from Iran, from the government of Iran, physically bringing a weapon into Iraq, and you can tie a string between the two, you can't assert that it necessarily was government-sponsored," he said. Don’t interfere with our Glorious Victory, I mean Liberation, or is it Regime Change, help the Iraqis to Democracy? I have heard so many excuse for this Invasion I forget the latest. Iran stop doing what we say you’re doing. Whatever that is. Yes Victory is just around some corner. ... http://www.rferl.org

As America contemplates construction of a massive fence along the Mexican border, it can look to Israel as a valuable test case.Israel is largely achieving its goal of keeping out Palestinian suicide bombers through a sprawling complex of fences, electric sensors and concrete slabs that snake in and out of the West Bank. But building the barrier has been a gutwrenching process, fraught with political and diplomatic hurdles, that has worsened Israel's relations with its neighbors.To be sure, there are key differences between the cases. Most important, the Israeli structure frequently juts into occupied territory claimed by the Palestinians. The American fence would run along a recognized border....http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/05/18/israel.border.fence.ap/index.html?section=cnn_world

A confident, even swaggering, Russia takes the helm of Europe's foremost human rights body today, ready to deflect accusations that it has failed to live up to the standards set by the institution it will lead for the next six months. Russia's chairmanship of the Council of Europe, whose three pillars are human rights, the rule of law and open democracy, comes just two months before President Vladimir Putin hosts the G8 summit in St Petersburg and will place the Kremlin's commitment to the core values of the West under fresh scrutiny.In recent months, concerns have been raised about Russia's moves to shut down non-governmental organisations, its curbing of the media and its imprisonment of Russia's richest man just when he was becoming a political rival of Mr Putin. The President has, meanwhile, developed strong links with the hardline authoritarian leaders of Belarus and Uzbekistan...http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article548121.ece

A CNN poll released on Thursday showed 54 percent of Americans support gathering phone records to find terrorists. A few days earlier, a Washington Post/ABC News poll showed 51 percent approve of the way Bush was protecting their privacy. According to a USA Today/Gallup survey last week, 53 percent of Americans think the government has restricted civil liberties appropriately or "not far enough." This shows that over half the people are willing to trade freedom for Illusionary safety. Who said the American Education System doesn’t work? It has taught people to believe Privileges is freedom and safety and comfort is a measure of freedom, and to accept to being Subjects in a once free country. Dammit, people read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, it’s not an oversight they are not taught in school anymore. If you’re Proud to be an American then act like a true American and not a Brainwashed useful Idiot...http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1977318

Humans and chimpanzees may have split away from a common ancestor far more recently than was previously thought. A detailed analysis of human and chimp DNA suggests the lines finally diverged less than 5.4 million years ago. The finding, published in the journal Nature, is about 1-2 million years later than the fossils have indicated. A US team says its results hint at the possibility that interbreeding occurred between the two lines for thousands, even millions, of years. This hybridisation would have been important in swapping genes for traits that allowed the emerging species to survive in their environments, explain the scientists affiliated to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the Harvard Medical School. And it underlines, they believe, just how complex human evolution has been. "This is a hypothesis; we haven't proved it but it would explain multiple features of our data," said David Reich, assistant professor of genetics at the Harvard Medical School ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4991470.stm

A senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says there will be a crisis unless the Hamas-led government withdraws a new security force. Several thousand members of the Palestinian security services have paraded through Gaza chanting slogans in support of Mr Abbas. The show of force came a day after the government deployed its own troops in defiance of the Palestinian president. Hamas says the force, which is headed by a militant, is to ensure security. Aides to Mr Abbas have said it will only deepen security problems. "I think the situation is a pressure-cooker situation. The situation is very fragile. And we don't want anything that may endanger the situation or push it from bad to worse," Saeb Erekat, a senior aide to President Abbas, told the BBC's World Update. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4993480.stm